


Revelations

by theRadioStarr



Series: The Lion Among the Wolves [7]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-03 03:05:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5274140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theRadioStarr/pseuds/theRadioStarr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There he is. Cyril Mornay, my second-in-command, about to be hanged for crimes I committed. </p>
<p>Too many have died for what I've done. </p>
<p>I'm sorry, Inquisitor. Even if you can't forgive me, I hope you'll respect what I choose to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revelations

I could still hear the slam of the barred cell door slamming shut.

Or maybe it was just the heavy armoured footfalls from above ringing through the stone, sending dust clouds falling to the floor in a poetic dance through the sunlight. It’s amazing, how you can find beauty in the simplest of things when you know your life is on the line.

I wondered if she would come to see me before she left. Surely she would want to spit in my face for what I’d done, for the lies I’d told.

I should have been surprised when she didn’t.

It didn’t take long before the door at the top of the stairs opened and closed with a resounding _boom_. I could recognize her footsteps anywhere, broken by the huffing of her wolf as he registered the smells of the place. And she was angry – oh was she angry. It radiated from her like the power she commanded, her blue eyes unusually icy.

And yet, she shone. Sera had once told me that she glowed, and it took until now for me to understand what she’d meant. Even in her cold fury, she was as beautiful as she was terrifying.

I had thought I might come to love her, once. I learned quickly that I had no chance with her, but I came to love her still – as a sister, a comrade-in-arms, as a leader of men and women who led from the front and held their liquor well.

To weather her disappointment was worse than anything I’d ever done.

She didn’t say a word; she just stood outside my cell, watching me as I sat and avoided her gaze like the worthless animal I am.

“I didn’t take Blackwall’s life. I traded his death,” I finally told her, just to break the silence. “He wanted me for the Wardens, but there was an ambush. Darkspawn. He was killed. I took his name to stop the world from losing a good man.” I could still feel her gaze on me, breaking right through me. “But a good man, the man _he_ was, wouldn’t have let another die in his place.”

She stepped closer, finally. Perhaps deciding she wasn’t as revolted by me as she originally thought. Her voice, when she spoke, shattered me: it was cold and clipped, the voice she kept for dignitaries who were about to cross the line, the voice of warning. “Was the bailiff telling the truth? Did you really do those things?”

“Yes, I did. It’s all true. It’s time we all got a good look at who I really am.” I was surprised by the sound of my own voice. How could I snarl at her like that? And yet, I couldn’t stop. “Don’t you understand? I gave the order to kill Lord Callier, his entourage, and I lied to my men about what they were doing!”

I was on my feet, hands around the bars of my prison cell door, rattling them as I shouted into the silence of the room around us, the sounds ringing. “When it came to light, I _ran._ Those men – _my_ men – paid for my treason while I was pretending to be a better man! This is what I am. A murderer, a traitor… a _monster.”_

I didn’t see the way Romulus snarled back at me as I shouted. I saw nothing but the disgust in her eyes as she watched me slide to the floor, broken.

“Would a monster have given himself up?” Her voice was just as icy as before, but it held conviction now. The conviction that drew people to her cause. “Somewhere along the line you stopped pretending.”

Silence fell between us again.

“Get up,” she demanded finally.

I did.

She questioned me for another few minutes. Who I was before, what I had done. What had happened to Blackwall, and who Cyril Mornay had been to me. When she had the answers she was looking for, she dismissed herself and left me without another glance back.

I deserved worse than that.

I learned to count the hours shortly after that. Each one seemed longer than the last, an eternity of torture though no one laid a single hand upon me. I was brought stale bread and hard cheese with bad ale twice a day. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I could just have had a block of wood to whittle at and a knife for it, but the first time I thought about cutting my own throat and being done with it all if I had one made me realize they were smart to keep one from me.

 

*                             *                             *

 

Two hundred and forty-seven hours.

That’s how long it took before they came for me. I was woken by the sound of the lock clanging open. “ _Get up,”_ the guard spat at me in Orlesian. I scrubbed at my eyes briefly as I pushed myself to standing, and he was on me instantly, spinning me so that my chest and cheek were pressed firmly into the rough wall as he tied my hands behind my back.

I was surprised by the hour; sunlight wasn’t even filtering through the small window across the row from me. Didn’t they want to make my execution as public as possible? I was about to ask when I was shoved from behind, between my shoulderblades. I stumbled.

“ _Move.”_

I did.

When I crested the steps and saw the Inquisition uniforms filling the reception area of the Keep, my heart sank.

“What’s going on?”

“You will be taken back to Skyhold to await judgement. Your life, as it has since you joined the Inquisition, belongs to Lady Inquisitor Lavellan. It will be she who decides your fate.”

They gathered me up, stuck me in the back of a wagon with a set of guards, and we left Val Royeaux behind before the first light of dawn. I wondered what she must have had to do to have me released, and what stain it would leave on her reputation. Did she really think it worth the backlash?

Death would have been a mercy. I had accepted my crimes, my fate. But when had Lupa ever given those who she sat in judgement over the mercy of death?

She would see me continue to live with this knowledge made public. She would see me protecting her back, as I’d done before, or sent off to the Wardens, maybe, as I should have been.

And I would accept her judgement. I would follow her to the ends of the earth and back again.

My life was in her hands, and she seemed reluctant to give it up just yet.


End file.
